[Python-ideas] PEP 4XX: Adding sys.implementation

[Nick Coghlan]

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Syntax-wise, dotted name access seems right to me for this, similar to
> sys.float_info. If you know a field exists, sys.implementation.field is much
> nicer than sys.implementation['field'].
>
> I hate to admit it, but I'm starting to think that the right solution here
> is something like a dict with dotted name access.

Whereas I'm thinking it makes sense to explicitly separate out
"standard, must be defined by all conforming Python implementations"
and "implementation specific extras"

Under that model, we'd add an extra "metadata" field at the standard
level to hold implementation specific fields. The initial set of
standard fields would then be:

name: the name of the implementation (e.g. "CPython", "IronPython",
"PyPy", "Jython")
version: the version of the implemenation (in sys.version_info format)
cache_tag: the identifier used by importlib when caching bytecode
files in __pycache__ (set to None to disable bytecode caching)
metadata: a dict containing arbitrary additional information about a
particular implementation

sys.implementation.metadata would then give a home for information
that needs to be builtin, without having to pollute the main sys
namespace.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia